SO ALRIGHT, COOL, WHATEVER | PETER PARKER

12

CHAPTER TWELVE | I LOVE MY FRIENDS

Oliver's Mom almost used physical force to keep him home the next day. Apparently his neck had a slight cut and when she saw the blood, the overprotective Mom switch was flipped. Oliver was berated for not being aware of his surroundings, then pulled into a hug that posed more danger than the cut.

The only reason why Oliver was at school was because he basically missed the whole week before.

When he showed up, Emma was the first to notice the band-aid, no matter the hoodie he wore, or the headphones around his neck. Emma babied him until lunch, then Leo came and started to do the same, and then Emma realized she was acting like Leo and stopped. Even Ned and Peter snapped out of their supor and noticed.

That was something new as well, Peter's very obvious crush on Liz Allen. It was so, so, painfully obvious that Oliver could feel the secondhand embarrassment they looked away quickly when they saw her looking at them.

Though, with the achievement of 'knife wound on the throat', Oliver managed to get the other boy's attention.

"Hey, are you sure you're okay? It must've been super scary?" Peter questioned softly. Oliver was slightly surprised by his concern. Oliver always thought that the other boy didn't like him that much.

"Oh, er, yeah," Oliver grinned, "Honestly I don't really remember it that much. The band-aid was just because my Mom was worrying a lot."

"Cool, I'm glad you're okay," Peter smiled at Oliver. At that moment, with Oliver probably still in shock (when was he not at this point), he realized how pretty the other boy was. Then Oliver grabbed those feelings and shoved them in a box because Peter very obviously had a crush on Liz Allen, and Olive didn't want to deal with that.

Oliver nodded and the conversation trailed off into sharing homework and food (mostly Emma stealing Neds food without him noticing). He fell into a daydream, not focusing on any of his friends, not really thinking about anything in particular. He was mindlessly shoving leftover pasta in his mouth until the bell rang.

Now that Oliver recognized that he was at the very beginning of catching feelings for Peter, he was hyper aware of everything. It was annoying. Normally Oliver dealt with his crushes by pining in secret. But with the shit that's happened to him in a month, his mental state was greatly unbalanced.

It made everything worse that there wasn't one thing he could put the blame on either. Maybe he could trace everything back to his goddamned obsession with rocks, but even then he can't really because that was a random event. He also couldn't exactly blame Nimue, since the only reason he was showing up was because Oliver had powers. Obviously he couldn't blame Tony either, because that was an amazing opportunity for him.

Throughout having an existential crisis, his english class was very much still happening. And it was just his luck that he got called out to read.

Snickers were heard as Oliver scrambled to find the page and paragraph in the book, his face quickly turning bright red. It was safe to say that he was never going to space out in class again.

"Psh," Emma laughed at the boy's pink cheeks, "You're so stupid,"

"Wow, way to reassure me, what a great friend, I feel so appreciated." He deadpanned back. Emma just laughed harder.

"Sorry, sorry, it's just that you're usually so well behaved and quiet in class, but now, hah," Oliver just grumbled to himself while Emma calmed herself down. "Anyway, do you really get to go on a trip for Yearbook?"

"Well, it's just for a couple days I think." Oliver paused to pull up the email, "I just need to take pictures of the Academic Decathlon, everything got approved while I was out last week." Oliver shuddered at the glares he got from a couple of the girls in the club.